Between the stirrup and the ground

“Here in Sweden,” an old friend emailed me recently, “a true
Christian is a curiosity, but the upshot is that there’s no point to fake it.”

Välkommen! to Sweden, a vast land
whose approximately 150,000 Catholics (1.5 percent of the population) must go allt eller intet (“all or nothing”), and where, if they
opt for the allt of faith, they can expect to be
marginalized, mocked, or tolerated as a kind of anachronism.

Enter Anders Arborelius — a Carmelite, cardinal, and the current
bishop of Stockholm, whose recent University Club of Chicago keynote on “Silence, Prayer, and Contemplation in a Secular Society,” sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute, bespeaks a surprising
serenity and confidence. Where we may see only the fallout of post-modern
secularism, Arborelius invites us to discover (at least) seven points of entry
to deeper faith, hope and charity.

Longing

“There are many places where there is no Catholic church,”
Arborelius observes, “and you can start to long.” This longing, he explains,
can fuel conversion. “In Sweden,” he continues, “you have to learn to long for
the Church, to long for God, to desire God. If you really lack something and
long for it, something can change.”

Beloved

Having taken the episcopal motto “in
laudem gloriae” (to God, praise and glory), Arborelius finds that “it has
often been forgotten that our first duty — and our privilege — is to honor and
glorify God.” In the busyness and loneliness of contemporary Sweden, he notes
that often “we are not taught how to be loved by God,” which he calls an
“important art”: “God is always offering us his immense love, but we don’t
notice it, because we have so much to do, so much to think about.”

Responsibility

“In a secular society,” Arborelius continues, “we will not get so
much help from outside. We have to take this seriously.” The cardinal sees here
an opening for a grittier ownership of one’s own formation: “That’s also kind
of a privilege,” he notes, “to realize that my life in this society means that
I have the responsibility to discover new ways of relating to Jesus, new ways
to see how he’s present in my life.”

Silence

“In society today, silence is very rare,” Arborelius notes.
“People are overwhelmed by so many words, so much propaganda, so many
ideologies, so many voices.” With the perspective of nearly 20 years in a
contemplative hermitage prior to being appointed bishop, he instructs us to
“fight” for silence through “practice” and “exercise in silence”: “We have to
learn how to be quiet in front of the Lord and let him speak to our heart.”

Friendship

The bishop notes that as Christians in Sweden are “criticized,
ridiculed,” or simply ignored, the need for friendships with fellow Christians
is vital: “someone who can help me, and someone I can help in order to grow.”
He notes that often, it is the very people who mocked you who “will come to
you” when they face problems in their own lives, “because somehow they realize
that this person lives for something more, something deeper.”

Purification

“We have so many appetites for all kinds of things, that we
cannot care for the Lord,” Arborelius observes of Sweden’s multitudinous
options. “That’s why something in us has to be taken away.” The Carmelite notes
that the “secular society of today” is “a kind of dark night of the soul,” a
“deep process of purification,” which can be “very painful, but also very
helpful,” and in which “something can change.”

Surrender

“We have this temptation to postpone the surrender,” Arborelius
warns, “and that’s a very, very dangerous temptation, because we have to do it
right now, because the Lord is present right now.” Within a “very secular
atmosphere,” there is nonetheless, he says citing Graham Greene, “grace
‘between the stirrup and the ground’: there are always possibilities to say
‘yes’ to the Lord.”

As secularism leaves less and less on the plate and as Christians
look more and more curious, a strategy emerges from the Nordic periphery:
“something can change.” “The upshot,” as my friend said, “is that there’s no
point to fake it.” Life with Christ is allt eller intet.
There is nothing to fear. And a descendant of Vikings declares that the time to
surrender is now.